Secrets
by Oisin55
Summary: Finnick Odair wasn't the only Victor who dealt in secrets. A companion piece to 'The Victors Project'


**Secrets**

1

Ahenobarbus Romero kept his mother's shawl tucked away in a box beneath his bed for most of his life. Sometimes he would take it out and smell it, trying to remember the scent of freshly baked cinnamon bread and peach cobbler. When the Victors found him after he suffered a fatal heart attack at eighty, he was clutching it to his chest. They burned it with him.

2

Luxe St. James sent an envelope of money to Districts 7 and 10 each year. They went to the families of the two tributes he killed; a pittance, but enough to keep them clothed and fed until the next spring.

3

Orchus slipped out of the district months before the Seventeenth Games and lived for five years in the wilderness. A small commune of Dark Days refugees was his only human contact. When he climbed the wall and assimilated back into District 11, no one recognized him for who he was.

4

Wheaton Vale kept a little black book of every sexual partner he had, even if the details were hazy and fragmented. He would sit in his house for days between the Games, flipping through the pages. At the time of his death there were 966 entries.

5

Platinum Wesley was diagnosed with cancer three times. The first two instances were cured in a matter of days during the yearly trips to the Capitol. The third diagnosis came a month after Luxe's death and Platinum quietly asked the doctor to forego treatment and let him rejoin his friend in comfort.

6

Tiberius Drake wrote love letters every year to his childhood friend Minerva, asking for her forgiveness. She returned each one unopened and unread.

7

After his Games Jules Elmer prowled the streets of District 7, looking for drunks to pick a fight with. He always stopped short of causing permanent damage until he slammed a door on one of his opponent's hands, mangling it. Within a month the man was out of work and begging on the streets outside the Tav. Jules never forgave himself.

8

Seaward Docker had a soundproof room built into the basement of his house for his piano. He hoarded illicit copies of Bach, Handel, Schubert and when he wasn't high he played for hours. He never let anyone hear lest the Capitol catch wind of his talent. They had taken everything from him, he wouldn't let them take his music.

9

Gleam Cobble never stopped hoping the circus his parents performed in before the Dark Days would be allowed to reform. He kept drawings and performance outlines locked in a draw in his desk, just in case.

10

Camden Donner quietly moved money into a secret bank account for five years. On the day it all became too much for the first Victor of District 12, his brother inherited the funds he needed to open a sweetshop and get out of the mines for good.

11

Mags Baxter-Dupont never really liked the taste of fish.

12

Bovina Martinez only ever loved one man and one woman. She told Raoul every day she was with him; she never confessed her feelings to Mags.

13

Woof Barton saw three female Victors over sixty years. Although in time he came to treat each of them like daughters, he always longed for a male Victor he could see as a son. When Cecelia gave birth to her first boy, he wept in both joy and envy.

14

Silk Seville became extremely wealthy by privately betting on the tributes during years she wasn't mentoring. She was eventually banned from the betting pools on the accusation that she was receiving inside information.

15

It was no secret that Vera O'Rourke was addicted to cosmetic alterations like much of the Capitol elite. The secret was her motive; she didn't want to look like the murderer staring back at her from the old footage of the Fifteenth Games.

16

Gates Gramdan married a very beautiful woman who in turn married him for his money. Within a few years they had both settled into a distant and mutual loathing. Gates made sure he had the last laugh, however; he wrote her out of his will long before he died and his wife had no choice but to sell her fine clothes and appointments and take a job in the manufacturing plants.

17

Just because Boudicca was never seen shedding tears doesn't mean she wasn't capable of it.

18

Granyte Tanner cut himself in the shower and watched the red stream run down the drain more mornings than not. Boudicca wouldn't let him kill himself, so he had to remind himself that he was alive somehow.

19

Manannan Ulmo had a collection of more than five hundred banned books hidden in various compartments and crevices around his house. Among his treasures were a collection of Irish mythology and J.R.R. Tolkien's _The Silmarillion_ , the two books from where his first and last names originated.

20

Wren Lessia was allergic to most kinds of nuts. She kept a special tin of them in her pantry so she could break out into hives at will to avoid Capitol banquets and speeches.

21

Thisbe Everett died trying to murder a twenty year old intern named Coriolanus Snow.

22

Honorius Manchetti made several secret trips to the village of Redfern in District 2 to meet with key rebel leaders. He suspected Lyme was a plant from the moment she showed up at the Institute, but never voiced those suspicions to anyone.

23

Evelyn Morris was married five times and dissolved each marriage within a year citing 'irreconcilable differences.' The men wanted financial security, she wanted companionship, but she wouldn't any of her husbands touch her. She wouldn't risk having kids, not ever. She didn't think never having sex was a shameful thing, really, but she kept that particular nugget of her sordid marriage life well under wraps.

24

Virtus Manchetti hawked his district token off to a pawn shop in the Capitol for less money than it took him to get drunk that night.

25

There were three bodies hidden behind bricked-up walls in the labyrinth of ruins that make up the Red. Only Cora Shutter knew exactly where they were and what their particular offences had been.

26

Emrys Avery didn't know why setting fires gave him a sexual high. But he preferred drugs to fires once he could afford them; the only person he risked hurting was himself.

27

Justus Scavo rebelled against his perfect-tribute-and-Victor image by having affairs with older Capitol women and breaking up their marriages.

28

Chevy Anderson still loved his youngest brother, despite publicly disowning him for bringing drugs into his house and encouraging his son to experiment with them. Sometimes Chevy went out at night and watched his baby brother stumbling into whatever drug den he was holing up in that month. He fingered money in his pocket as he saw his brother's starved and gaunt frame, but he knew he'd only use it for his next hit.

29

Ben Cooper had a drunken one-night stand with the chocolatier he'd always had a fancy for, and even though Abram Mills looked nothing like him he was never able to shake off the suspicion that his last Victor may have also been his son.

30

Luster Lancaster was afraid of the dark and slept with a candle on his nightstand.

31

Seeder Crue developed an eating disorder that lasted for twenty years after her Games. She would wake up in the middle of the night and gorge herself, convinced that she was starving in the prairie again. Then, immensely ashamed at the waste of food, she'd purge. She was only able to beat the disorder after watching the path Haymitch Abernathy went down.

32

Antigone Frey was voluntarily sterilized during her training at the Institute and regretted it ever since. The younger Victors called her 'Mother Tig' for her doting, scolding manner, but they never understood why she would suddenly excuse herself from barbeques and dinner parties, wiping her eyes and pleading allergies.

33

It's an open secret that Briseis Barrington had a psychotic break-down and murdered half of her abusive family after the Games. By unspoken district law it's never spoken about with outsiders in any context.

34

After the deaths of her children in the Second Quarter Quell and her beloved husband's suicide, Elena Perez made a bonfire of all their belongings so she wouldn't have to live with the ghosts.

35

Beetee Latier self-diagnosed himself as a sociopath soon after his Games to explain why he didn't feel any guilt about the six tributes he murdered. It was easier than coming to terms with his suspicion that he might just be evil.

36

Cerulea Larson bought fresh flowers for the tribute graves every year on reaping day.

37

After the Mockingjay Revolution news spread through District 2 of an old hermit living high in the tunnels and vaults of what was once the Nut. They called him 'the Confessor,' and people would make pilgrimages up the side of the mountain to confess crimes and misdeeds and leave offerings of food and other supplies. The hermit never spoke, never identified himself, and only after he died did his foster sister confirm that the Confessor was Barty Pastier, the Victor of the Thirty-Seventh Games.

38

Wonder Spicer attempted to poison his mentor on several occasions over the course of a decade, but Luster Lancaster took a few lessons from Snow and had built up an immunity to the most common toxins found in the districts.

39

Dido Castremi secretly sponsored several District 3 tributes, just to spice things up once in a while.

40

Nolan De Naro hated Peeta Mellark from the moment he joined up with the Career pack in his first Games. Blind with prejudice and armed with his own twisted sense of outer district honor, he went for Peeta first in the Quell, only to be taken down by a particular observant and distrustful Johanna Mason.

41

When Ares Valerio learned that his wife had been abused by an uncle when she was a young girl, he followed the man home from the quarries one night, barricaded his door, and lit the shack on fire. The man escaped but his injuries were severe enough that he wouldn't be pleasuring himself with anyone for the rest of his life, and so Ares considered the debt paid.

42

Eamon Sullivan could trace his hatred of gay people from the moment his father walked out the door to shack up with another man, leaving his mother sobbing quietly at the kitchen table.

43

Ermine Butler had a secret addiction to caramel-covered chocolate cakes.

44

Maeve Collins found her relief from the nightmares at the end of a morphling needle. The morphling turned the grey and yellow smog of District 6 into a showers of gold dancing in rolling waves, the tepid rain into a gentle caress, the memories of the hot jungle and the screams of dying tributes into a vaguely interesting television program. Most importantly, the morphling kept the PTSD at bay long enough for Maeve to send secret messages between rebel factions in the country through her network of drug dealers.

45

Chaff Habarti was both relieved and devastated when Haymitch avoided the Third Quarter Quell thanks to the interference of Peeta Mellark. Thanks because at least one of them would be there to rebuild the country after the coming war, devastated because Chaff loved and trusted Haymitch like a brother and he wanted him there in arena. Chaff was afraid to die alone.

46

Matthias Fletcher would frequent the most underground and depraved sex clubs in the Capitol each year after the death of his tribute. He was conscientious enough to wear a woolen mask to hide his face at all times. His tributes didn't need sponsors like the ones he submitted himself to on hard, cold concrete floors.

47

Brilliance Rosencratz once said some very unflattering things about President Snow's more extreme policies during a private dinner party.

48

Brutus Barsetti bought clothes for his son Aaron every year when he was in the Capitol. Tiny jumpers with cartoon mutts, woolen socks with eye-watering neon stripes, little knit cardigans, play shorts, a first pair of hiking boots. He never sent them over to District 8, instead keeping them locked in boxes in his basement. They burned with the rest of the Village during the rebellion.

49

Jade Boleyn sabotaged her own Victor's Banquet at the President's mansion by pouring several vials of the purging elixir into the fountains of punch and spirits. She saved one last vial for the man who had purchased her company for the evening.

50

Haymitch Abernathy can remember the names and faces of every child he ever mentored, but when he lay awake at night trying to remember the color of his girlfriend's eyes, he draws nothing but an alcoholic blank.

51

Lyme agreed to infiltrate the Institute after her best friend, a true patriot, died in the Forty-Ninth and the commentators bemoaned that the kill was so quick.

52

Blight Gavin lost his faith in the gods when Jason Mellark died. He found it again when he went into the Quell to protect Jason's distant cousin.

53

Wiress Okamoto could hold white liquor almost better than Haymitch and Chaff could, and won several sponsorships for her tributes by out drinking some of the Capitol's finest whiskey connoisseurs. She told Beetee the sponsorships came from the university's science club so he wouldn't waste her time with lectures.

54

Halibut Shore knew his son was going to die from the moment he was reaped. His mentoring of the boy lacked any conviction as he didn't want to get his hopes up. Hal spent the rest of his days haunted by the thought that if he had just fought to keep his boy alive a little longer, he could've made it to the flood and outswam Annie Cresta.

55

For twenty years the bed in the master bedroom of Mitt Compton's house remained unslept in, as the Victor of the Fifty-Fifth preferred to sleep curled up on the floor next to the heater. Once the morphling was in his bloodstream he couldn't feel the hardwood floor or the sores down his legs and backside anyway.

56

Connor Murphy wrote obnoxious love letters and sent them to Lyme anonymously.

57

Cecelia Rheys had almost more secrets than she could count. The identities of her children's fathers, the ever lurking presence of Victoria, the personality she had developed during her Games, her role in smuggling stitched messages to District 3 in the lining of fancy scarves. But the secret she held closest was the burial place of her sister Kerry and her father. She didn't trust the Capitol to keep the graves untouched.

58

Roan Tully had severe dyslexia and was functionally illiterate. His escort had to read his speeches during the tour dozens of time before he could recite them back perfectly.

59

Circe Montoya assembled an evacuation plan for her people in case of uprising and war. As soon as the Mockingjay sent the arrow into the forcefield the few remaining Campers vanished into the wilderness. Their destination was a secret Circe took to her grave.

60

Phoebus almost hoped he would be reaped for the Quell so he'd have a chance to slit Blight Gavin's throat on live television.

61

Crystal Flute cut through a strap on her rival's harness right before the rock-climbing test during their fourth year at the DAEYD. The harness failed at a critical point and the rival plunged to her death. Crystal never told anyone but someone must have guessed because her prestige went up five ranks when she returned.

62

When Enobaria Malachite murdered someone on Snow's orders, she always left a tiny slip of paper with a picture of a rose somewhere on or near the body so her victim's relatives knew exactly who was to blame.

63

Gloss Delacroix grew up loving his sister almost as much as he loved himself, and he died hating her almost as much as he hated himself.

64

Cashmere Delacroix took anonymous correspondence courses from the University of Panem when she wasn't being bought and sold or mentoring tributes. She had degrees in microbiology and chemistry and was working on a third in ancient history when the Quell was announced.

65

Finnick Odair was as pansexual as they came, but he never imagined himself ending up with a woman until the day he met Annie Cresta. Then there was no other possibility.

66

Song Nuo enjoyed having threeways with her husband and pretty blonde girls from around the district, because while she knew she always had his heart she wasn't opposed to letting him indulge his eyes once in a while.

67

Johanna Mason had nine secrets, but good luck getting her to tell you any.

68

Berenice Equita was a Victor by default who never got over being cheated out of her final showdown with the boy from District 1. Much like Jules Elmer sixty years before her, Berenice would pick fights in Capitol clubs with men older and much burlier than she. She'd beat them down until they were whimpering for mercy, surrounded by a cheering crowd, expecting the trumpets to ring out her victory at any moment.

69

Abram Mills had body confidence issues even after he dropped forty pounds and was named _Cannon_ Magazine's Sexiest Newcomer. He tried dating girls but always worried that their compliments were insincere, mocking, covering disgust and loathing. When he was in the Capitol he simply hired call girls. At least he knew they were insincere, after all he was paying them for it.

70

Annie Cresta prepared for the Games by stalking and killing stray dogs. When Finnick suggested getting a puppy one rainy night Annie went into a panic attack that rendered her mute for three days. When she covered her ears it wasn't the screams or the rushing water or the sound of metal cutting through bone and tendon that she heard loudest. It was the barking.

71

Cora and Cecelia didn't dare come any closer to Cotton's house than the front walk, because the whole place was booby-trapped and only Cotton knew where she set every trap.

72

Lupus Pagano loved jazz and blues music but couldn't even choose it as a talent because his team felt it softened his 'image.' He managed to get his hands on an ancient record player and repaired it in secret and would spend hours listening to the rebellious sounds of an age long passed.

73

Odysseus Wheeler spent most of his Games in the nude and developed some voyeuristic tendencies as a result.

74

Peeta Mellark blamed himself for Prim's death.

75

Everyone always seemed to know Katniss Everdeen's secrets before she knew them herself.


End file.
